Occupy LSX At St Paul's Evicted

The Occupy camp at St Paul's has gone, like we knew it would. There's a certain weary inevitability about police moving in at night – the action started just after midnight – evictions like this always seem to happen under cover of intimidating darkness, but equally there are fewer people around to remove / cause trouble.

Some protesters started packing up after being given a warning (though we're rather concerned at reports cleaners threw people's possessions into rubbish trucks), but others built a wooden fort from pallets and more moved to the steps of the cathedral to wait it out. Police dismantled the barricades, plucking protesters off, and then riot police cleared the steps. This is proving to be the most controversial aspect of the operation as the steps belong to St Paul's, the inference being the cathedral must have requested it. However, the Guardian notes riot police repeatedly dragged protesters off the steps (sometimes the same ones) rather than immediately arresting them. Twenty arrests were made overall.

The School of Ideas was also evicted last night, despite a court case still in progress. Protesters will continue to use the area around St Paul's; the court order applied only to the actual camp, not the protest.

Occupy themselves have offered a resigned shrug but say this is only the beginning of their attempts to highlight inequality and unfairness. From a statement on their website:

But be assured that plans are already afoot: plans of some ambition, employing a diversity of tactics and delivered with the aplomb you would expect from us. All will be revealed in time. May is one of our favourite months.

"My personal concern is that we don't allow the drama of this event to eclipse the huge and important issues that we in this country and billions across the world are increasingly facing."

Unfortunately that's exactly what has happened. The Occupy saga has become solely about the group, not about the issues they represent.

Rev

@ Dean - Whilst Occupy has been on, greed and Corporatocracy have been regularly appearing in the news. No banker has ever refused a bonus before, and he did it as a result of public pressure, generated in a large part by Occupy. Some journalists have chosen to focus on the saga, some of them in papers with articles on greed, lobbying and corporatocracy in the same issue, unaware of the irony.